The online network X has sparked significant anger after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by taking off their garments.
Numerous examples have been seen where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to give commentary or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting images of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
